Y.O 3/4 floor pans. %$^&#$#@! fit and welding frustrations.

[DMZ73]

 

I finally had time to get my floor pan patch welded in. All I can say is I am tweaked. I trimmed them to fit for w butt-joint weld- I have had plent of expirience. Great. Tacked no problem.

I had the support rails clean and ground for good welding contact. I went to rosette weld them and they would not stay. I ground down a channel, and a little better.  It took me forever to get good penetration and contact to the rails. Stillnot great. I had to bang the livin' snot out of it to get it to contact. Thank god this part is not seen by eyes for very long.

I still need to do major clean-up and hit a few areas again.

Did I mention that this part did not fit exactly? Yeah, that would be  asmall problem.

Anyway It's in. Anyone have any similair frustrations with this?
I will post pics later.
Dan

[cudazappa]

I had the same problems with my YO floor pan in my challenger.  I just did the same thing you did, bang bang bang.  I hope when it comes time to do the quarters I don't have the same issues.

[nivvy]

I believe mine were goodmarks... however they went in with no issues......

[Samuelson1022]

Are you referring to the side rails or the trans crossmember? Cause i had plenty of problems with where the flange goes allong either side.

[DMZ73]

For some reason, no matter how clean I got the top sides of the rails, I can't get good contact to weld to them for anything.
The rest of it worked pretty well.

The outer left corner- drivers side- The transition from the frame rail up to the firewall gets haywire. I had to bang on it like a madman to get it to fit .

So many contact probblems, I may have to grind out my welds and clean off the rails again and try a bit more. It makes me sick. I am ashamed. I know I can clean it up and put some  bonding adhesive under there, but that bugs  me.
It needs to be tacked.

Dan

[DMZ73]

Here are the pics of the disaster.
I am not happy. This is definitely not up to par. No matter what I did I could not get good metal to metal contact on my rails!


Here is a shot:
< http://www.pbase.com/dmz73/image/97867794 >

looks like I get to do it again to get rid of the waves.

Dan

[fk5hemi]

i have seen rocker panels galvenized and would be hard to weld to. you would have to sand blast or lightly grind off the galvenized spots where you are going to weld.